


In Dreams

by freddiejoey



Category: Arthur of the Britons
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-31
Updated: 2011-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-23 07:18:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/247640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freddiejoey/pseuds/freddiejoey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The past is not always at rest.......</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Dreams

Part One

Last night I dreamed of Goda. Goda in her various guises. Laughing and sun-kissed during our first brief meeting, when I was on my way to battle, barefoot and eager at Athel’s that second time, pale and wide-eyed as I woke her up with my axe’s edge……

The very first time, marching to war against Cerdig’s Saxons outside Sarum………..we stopped for a night, camping near a ring of homesteads. And suddenly there she was, leaning on a fence near one of her father’s byres, combing that lustrous hair in the dusk, newly washed and smelling of marigold. They say that marigold is an aphrodisiac and perhaps that is so. Certainly I wanted her desperately from that initial moment.

It was a time of trial and tumult for me in another way too. Grappling with my feelings for Arthur. Already certain that I was irredeemably in love……..sure that he felt nothing at all for me beyond brotherly affection……….wondering how I was ever to live the rest of my life without his warm skin grazing mine……..(oh, how foolhardy we are at two and twenty…….)

Goda was therefore a welcome distraction – a distraction that welcomed me to her bed and seemingly her heart, as we warriors hunted and exercised, waiting on word of the Saxons’ advance. Then we moved on, amid fervent promises and passionate kisses, and I fully expected never to see her again……… (When I later swear how zealously I have sought after her during the intervening months, much of it will be elaboration.)

The second time, three seasons later………by then, Arthur and I were……..as we have been ever since, heart-fast, captivated, cherished. Except that, even though the miracle had happened, it was still a capricious miracle back then. My little brother was wintertide and spring, frost and fire……….and the weeks leading up to our capture by Morcant, had been far more blight than flame. I was ripe for diversion, so when my trailing gaze alighted on Goda………..

Of course, in my quest to square accounts with Arthur, ravage his innards as so often then he ravaged mine, I leapt into the abyss and fell among the nettles. I knew that I had succeeded when he called me a lovesick goat, when I confirmed that I had taken leave of my senses and threw Goda’s sack into his arms, when he dismounted at home, clutching a groom’s shoulder for support.

But still, obstinately, wilfully, I persisted. I was marrying Goda in a day, three days at most. What she ever would have done when Arthur held out his hand and I put my lips to those beautiful fingers, weeping, I don’t know. Her treachery ran so much deeper that it became a moot point anyway.

And so to the last time. Her eyes, round with terror, certain of her fate……..It was a clean kill and I have never felt a moment of guilt. Goda put at risk the whole village, my father, the love of my life. If Morcant had prevailed, not a man, woman or child, would have been left alive – and Olwen’s loyal husband Perry succumbed to their duplicity anyway. “She got what she deserved” I told Arthur then and I still believe that now. More so.

Slaying women is never easy and always done sparingly. But when it is necessary, in defence of our family and our people, I will do what needs to be done without self-condemnation – whether or not she once writhed between my thighs. Goda’s death was as essential as Morcant’s drowning. There was simply no other way. Was I supposed to spare Goda’s life, banish her instead to Gaul or some remote Celtic outpost in the north, to hatch her perfidy anew? She and her ilk would have showed no such mercy to us.

Now, as I struggle out of the dream, my final glimpse of Goda encompasses her bloody throat, her lolling head. It is vivid enough to make me cry out I think……..although when I look around the longhouse bedroom no-one else stirs in the dawn hush. Lenni is still fast asleep beside me. The very opposite of Goda. Lacking her startling beauty perhaps - but also her treasonous heart, her disregard for innocent lives laid waste, her faithless soul.

A few feet away, Theo and Cedric lie on their sheepskins, my little ants, just past their fourth and second summers. It reminds me sharply that in my earliest delirium for Goda I had come inside her, recklessly spilling my seed deep within her cankered womb. The thought now makes me shudder……

Llud is still sleeping off the effects of the previous night’s new mead barrel. And Rowena is perfectly still with Kaitlin held against her, yet I should have known…….Arthur opens one enquiring blue eye, gestures toward the door, slips quietly out of bed so as not to disturb his wife and daughter.

Out, beside the hearth, I huddle into my cloak. Not particularly cold this morning but somehow I feel the need to shiver, despite the fire that Arthur is prodding into life. The dream has been more deep-seated than I hoped……… Arthur turns with a cup of warm mead in either hand, sits down beside me, pulls me close.

“Well, what disturbed your slumber? Not a giant chasing you with a spear where the river turns south?” I smile, despite my fretful state. “No little brother, not a giant in sight. No, I dreamed of ………Goda.” A rather breathless silence. One of those names that is rarely, if ever, uttered these days, like Benedicta…….

Then his lips are in my hair, trailing down my face, across my neck. Shivering again, but from far more pleasurable causes now. “Put it aside my heart. Something must have provoked a memory………Lay it to rest again. How many years since…..almost nine?” A final hard kiss on my mouth as there are sounds of arising from the sleeping chamber.

And I do try to implement his advice, cast the recollections away, remember that all that ruckus was long in the past. Athel and Tarn are now our firm allies again. Morcant sleeps peacefully or otherwise, forever among the lilies……

But something that I had thought absolutely dealt with has suddenly reared into mercurial life again. Shadowing the day. Bedimming the coming night, with its risk of dreams.

Llud’s prophetic slumbering, that preceded Gavron’s machinations, taught me the fidelity of dreams. If more heed had been paid then, he and I would not have ended, like chickens trussed up for the spit, awaiting Arthur’s rescue. Yet I still cannot fathom why the wraiths of Goda have chosen to brush against me now. No girl of the village has recently kindled any memories with her swinging hips and sensuous walk – although, truth be told, I have long ago lost the desire or necessity to gaze, other than idly.

For the rest of the day I actually do very little. Sitting with Llud in the sunshine, binding my axe, watching Kaitlin and the boys run and tumble their way to exhaustion. Tomorrow Arthur and I are riding to Hereward’s encampment for a few days. But I must look more wan than I supposed because Lenni makes me drink a rather repulsive concoction of cress and poppy. Then Arthur takes me aside and says that he will be taking Llud with him to Hereward’s instead. “You are far too precious big brother. Stay here and rest. We’ll be back in a few days.”

I make a token protest – then let it rest. Truly, I don’t feel myself – anxious and weary and somehow waiting……. For who or what I know not, nor perhaps want to. At any rate, Hereward’s twaddle is the last thing I could tolerate patiently.

That night I toss and turn. Lenni is up in her hut with one of the village warriors who has injured himself in the practice yard, being too slow to dodge a skimming short sword. Now the bed seems too wide, I seem absurdly vulnerable. Watching Arthur sleep reassures me as it always has……..my beloved little brother. Yet I am still stupidly relieved when Theo becomes fractious and I can comfort him – “growing grumbles” Lenni calls it, since he is thriving like a sapling on a river bank.

However, all in vain really……..toward morning my battle against sleep is lost. And again I dream of Goda. Only this time, she does not squander herself in my arms or dance with her feet glistening in the dew. No, she is lying in Morcant’s hut, her throat deftly slashed. And, although I know that Goda died instantly since I yielded the axe myself, still she is not dead here, despite the proficiency of the wound. Gurgling in her own fetid blood, trying to speak, ripe ruby gushing from her gaping neck, her eyes wide and astonished, almost as they were in passion. Goda’s fingers clench around mine, a skeletal death grip, as icy as a burial mound in midwinter……..

I wake up yelling, Arthur and Llud already out of bed, swords in hand, Theo startled beside me, Rowena franticly trying to soothe Cedric and Kaitlin who are crying in fright. And I realise that I have been blasted by the moon…………

“I don’t want to leave you my Kai.” Arthur straps the last fleece on to his white horse in the stables. “Promise me to look after yourself while Llud and I are away. Do what Lenni says.” Smiling, I lean across the horse’s back, tenderly grazing that beautiful mouth, encircling that hot moist tongue. “You know that I can deny you nothing beloved. So…….. a promise already sworn and signed.” Hoping he does not mark any uncertainty in my tone.

Once they have ridden away, I am virtually confined to the longhouse by Lenni, dosed again - a slightly more palatable rosemary and yarrow draught this time - and allowed to make a copy of Arthur and Dirk’s last treaty, but nothing more. I start to feel somewhat better. It is relaxing to sit in front of the fire, drink a little mead, scribble phrases about mutual defence on to parchment. Apart from already missing Arthur, it is all quite pleasant.

After the midday meal, the village men go down to the lake to fish, with their nets and hooks. Normally I would join them in the fine summer weather. But today I only call out to wish them success, good-naturedly endure their jests about being fettered by my wife’s apron ribbons. They will be back late in the afternoon with brown trout and red-spotted char.

In fact they are back much earlier than that – barely a few hours later. There is the sound of flying footfalls outside, a breathless explanation to the door sentries, and one of Tugram’s sons bursts into the longhouse, shirtless and dripping wet. “Kai, come quickly, you’re needed……..down beside the lake……….something awful.”

I know at once what it is………who it is. A large pale bulbous bloated thing. Tangled in a net. Nibbled at by predatory fish. Most of the skin and hair sloughed away. Just a few tenacious black strands clinging to that congealed scalp. The face completely denuded, a vacuous mask. But I can still recognize the matching studded wrist bands and that diamond-patterned tunic - although leached of colour and rimpled by long immersion.

It is Morcant.

 

Part Two

The body will need to be burned. Right now. Before sunset.

It smells of reeking decay and noisome death. That much assails everyone’s shrinking nostrils. But it also emanates putrid self-accusation, malodorous regret, nauseating shame……….even if I am the only one able to discern these other pernicious odours……..

Again, a death for which I feel no guilt or penitence. Sanctioned by Arthur and my own conscience. A treacherous scheming swine, Morcant.

The water that day was icy when I drowned him among the lilies. Afterwards, sodden and miserable and shivering………Arthur’s outstretched hand……..my weeping heart………..

No, the self-accusation, the shame and regret do not spring from holding Morcant’s head under until he ceased to breathe. It is all to do with so forsaking my little brother……seeking puerile consolation elsewhere………….almost forfeiting everything most precious………

The flames will need to cleanse more than loathsome flesh and decaying leather……..

We gather great piles of dry kindling, fling the stinking corpse on top, shroud it in ancient crackling beast skins. I stand for a moment, burning stake in hand, overwhelmed by emotions completely disparate to those that engulfed me long ago, gazing at Roland’s pyre.

Then I hurl the blazing bough on to Morcant’s heap and watch the leaping fire scorch and parch, wither and singe…………

It is almost over, the blaze being reduced to sparks and tinder, when I look around and see Lenni beside me. She smiles, weaves her fingers through mine, knowing what this odious searing represents since she witnessed Morcant’s death from her hiding place on the hill with the other women and children. Witnessed also my demented infatuation with Goda.

I smile back, bend down to kiss her, feeling light-headed with relief. “Sweetheart……..” I begin to explain……… But I glance up once more……… a corner of the charred hide has fallen away, revealing a portion of body still unburned, insufficiently sealed by dry wood. Morcant’s curdled countenance, one stark hollow socket………….

Without warning, my vision smudges. I feel the brush of Lenni’s mouth, see the startled concern in her brown eyes, recognise the grass rising to meet me……..

Dreams in shards and fragments........the little boat on the river with Roland......... “Hello, I'm Arthur,” my terror allayed...............a tremulous first kiss below a murderous bough...........the white butterfly after the fury of the challenge........... “I know......” flayed back, flayed heart................A long-lost medallion………..Llud and Gavron’s giant…………. “…….until the barrel is dry”, my heart restored………….. “…..you will love Rome”, my heart in slivers…………..a kiss to seal forever while the tempest rages……….Lenni handing me newborn Theo……………. yesterday’s delicious kiss, while a white horse whickered…………

There is a scratchiness, a rustling which I slowly realise is no dream. The crinkling of parchment……….Arthur sitting on the edge of my bed, reading the treaty I have scribed. When he feels my eyes on him, he smiles, tenderly strokes my cheek. “So you’re awake big brother? Good. You must be hungry.” He leans over, melts his warm lips against mine, melts my heart.

Drowsily I look around the longhouse bedroom. By the way the dusky light falls through the straw-woven walls, it must be near sunset. ‘How long have I been asleep?” Straightening the scrolls, Arthur rises to his feet, stretching his lean muscles. “A day and a night and a day again. Lenni told me what happened……….little wonder you’ve been overwrought. I’m only sorry I wasn’t here. All done now though – ashes tossed to the wind, let the brutal bastard rot in hell.”

All at once, I realise how unnaturally quiet it is. “Where is everyone?” Arthur pauses at the door. “Rowena and the children are up in Lenni’s hut, making sure she rests, since she hasn’t slept since they brought you back here. And I don’t need to tell you, that rest Lenni will, in the face of that formidable Jute determination. While Llud is busy inspecting Olwen’s………wicker.” My little brother winks and darts into the main room of the longhouse.

While he is gone, I try to make sense of the past few days, the dreams, the portents. Did my nightly visions of Goda somehow presage the ascent of Morcant’s repellent remains? Certainly. Llud is no fanciful soothsayer – yet he has always believed in the veracity of dreams. Then there are Lenni’s innate skills………

Certainly too, I can mark what Goda’s spectre and Morcant’s rotting corpse betokened – guilt. Not, Jupiter forbid, guilt over her death or Morcant’s at my hands. Not for a moment. No, guilt that I did not trust in my love and Arthur’s enough then to simply weather the winter and wait patiently for the spring that was sure to arrive – and eventually did. I should know since it is a spring that has never abated in my heart………

Instead I let requital, masquerading as wayward lust, to almost destroy us all. Gripping the blanket around me, I shudder violently at the memory of so publicly kissing Goda beside the lake…….. The gods, of course, recompensed my lack of faith by shipwrecking Benedicta near our estuary.

Another tainted remembrance……..lying night after night, exactly where I lie now, knowing precisely where Arthur is and what he is doing with whom………..soaking the sheepskin with my desolate tears……….framing my request to Mark about joining his warband……….knowing that when Arthur marries her I shall lose my home as well as my heart, since she is no Rowena……. “Best think about where you will build yourselves a new hut……..”

“My Kai.” Arthur interrupts my entangled thoughts, banishing the past, flooding me with relief and gratitude………… and desire…….. “Stop frowning, everything’s well. Here, food and drink……….Now, what are you thinking with that devilish smile?” I burrow back into the sheepskins. “That saying I love you more than life cannot even begin to express how much………..That looking at you, standing there with your chicken and mead, I’m falling in love with you all over again…….Heavens Arthur, is that a tear?”

He cuffs me gently, setting down the platter. ‘Of course it is, you sentimental old fool. You’re making me exactly like you as the years pass – and about time too……….”

“……..So we came back early.” Drinking the last of his mead, Arthur puts his cup on the bedside chest, throws the last chicken bone into the pile on his plate. “No-one like Llud for scything bloody Hereward’s ramblings and anyway, our father’s nose was doing a little twitching. Reassured now that he’s seen that you’re alright.” My little brother smooths the hair back from my temples, his forehead creasing. “You are alright, aren’t you Kai?” Laughing softly, I slither my fingers across his. “Oh yes, extremely alright and getting better all the time.”

“Good.” Picking up the remnants of our meal, he unfastens his sword belt and throws it aside, discards his outer tunic. Standing in skin-tight breeches and our blue shirt, Arthur is straight and supple and beautiful beyond words……….He snuffs out the rush lights, leaving just a few candles burning. “Anything else that you need before we sleep big brother?”

I can feel where my blood is flowing, pooling in hot anticipation, already making me hard as Roman marble………. “Only one more thing little brother……….Only you.”

His gift to me……….Arthur wraps his dextrous thumb and index finger around the base of my rigid shaft, flicking the tip of my cock and tracing its engorged outline with his tongue. He surrounds my prick head with his wet lips, his right hand stroking my shaft now too. Slowly, Arthur moves his silky dark head closer until his mouth meets his hand, then begins to thrust his lips and hand in unison, to the crown and back, gradually gaining momentum.

Gripping my taut manhood tighter, Arthur fondles my swollen balls, clasping and releasing them rhythmically in time with his moist mouth on my cock. I run my trembling fingers through his long ebony hair, moaning elatedly, as I edge closer…..

Sucking exuberantly, deftly caressing my slick shaft, nuzzling my feverish balls. Whimpering in euphoria I feel my legs clench, my aching cock spasming in his grasp, thick white come spurting into his comely mouth, my fingers stiffening in his fragrant hair.

Laughing Arthur swirls my seed around his gleaming teeth with his glistening tongue. Then he closes his mouth, swallows, sticks his tongue playfully out at me.

I lean forward, kiss his hot wet mouth, tell him that I love him more than the stars do the moon…………

My gift to him………….Lightly breathing on the root of his bucking prick, I lick his lithesome balls, gently nibbling, tenderly grazing. One after each other, I take a throbbing ball into my mouth, frenziedly sucking, his already burgeoning cock growing ever more glutted in my hand.

Swaddling that succulent fiery shaft with my voracious mouth, I inch forward until his soft sable bush tickles my nose. Arthur rears back, groaning deeply, panting like a stag outfleeing the hunting spears. I have all of him taken in now, hard and magnificent and still blossoming……….

His eager hands grip my thighs, pulling me toward him as my milking intensifies, as his jutting cock pervades, captures, sweeps my throat………

“Kai, my heart” – a stifled ecstatic bellow……..

My mouth is washed by hot musky issue…….then I quickly draw back so that it splashes spasmodically all over my face, dousing my nose and cheeks with ivory nectar.

Grinning happily, I lick the last drop of shimmering come from Arthur’s pendant tip. “You beautiful mess.” He grins back, heaving and replete. “Then, you’d better clean me up beloved”……..and that luscious tongue brushes glowing heat against my flushed skin……..

I lay back, utterly peaceful, his hand nestled in mine, his smile warming me more completely than any Beltane fire.

“No more bad dreams big brother.” Arthur’s soft lips trickle across my throat. “No my love……..but then my life is a dream now, because I share each day with you.” And in his answering kiss I taste, tomorrow, the fruition of the coming years, evermore without end………


End file.
